The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 9: Families: Section I: Uta

Uta: The palace: Qemassen

There was someone inside Samelqo's rooms. The door was ajar, and no guards were posted outside. Samelqo had left for the exorcism.

Uta crept silently up the last steps, then lingered on the small landing. She pressed her cheek to the wood and listened. Someone was moving about—a man, to judge by the heft of the footfalls. Could it be one of Zioban's people? Uta was to meet some of them in a few nights, according to what Zioban had told her, but with the heq-Ashqen busy with Ashtaroth's exorcism, perhaps Zioban had seized an opportunity.

Uta hovered at the door, uncertain. She slunk inside, fists clenched, just in case.

King Eshmunen stood before one of the tables, poking through papyri. Alone.

"My king!" Uta bowed so fast that when she lifted her head the room spun.

He crooked two of his fingers at her, beckoning her into the room.

Uta closed the doors behind her, squinting at the brightness of the evening sun.

Eshmunen took a seat on one of the settees along the walls. He clutched its edge as though he might fall without the support. "I know the heq-Ashqen hasn't returned yet, but I couldn't sleep. I find myself troubled. Forgive me."

"Forgive you?" She should be used to King Eshmunen by now, yet his lack of propriety disarmed her. She sat behind Samelqo's desk, her movements measured, the better to project a calm she didn't feel.

"For the intrusion." Eyes downcast, Eshmunen may as well have been carrying on a conversation with the floor.

"There's no need, Sese. You're always welcome here." Uta sat in silence, unable to keep herself from staring as Eshmunen continued in his forlorn pose. Couldn't he leave her in peace? Who knew when Samelqo would return?

The king would often wax gloomy when he came to the tower, but today he seemed even more so. He and Ashtaroth were much alike: seeking solace from the heq-Ashqen, whining to his slaves when Samelqo himself wasn't available, using Uta and her husband both.

It made her sick to think of it. But what was the alternative? Ask the king to go? He didn't care that she might be busy herself, that she might have wanted to use these rooms.

"What do they call you, woman? I've forgotten." He was ever sombre, Eshmunen, ever sad.

She didn't believe for a moment, though, that he'd forgotten her. "Uta, Sese. Uta et-Lohit."

"And where are you from?" Eshmunen's grip on the rim of the settee tightened.

"The palace, Sese."

"That's no place to come from."

Uta shifted on Samelqo's chair. "Even so, it is where I was born."

Was that a smile struggling to be born at the corners of Eshmunen's mouth? "Then we come from the same place, you and I. But I suppose it wouldn't have mattered what you said. The common houses of Qemassen are as mysterious to me as the island of Ull. It could be another world behind those sandstone walls. It could be Indas."

Trading wit with Eshmunen was not how Uta had envisioned her time away from her husband. She clenched her jaw, deciding on a point of inquiry that might cause him to leave. If Moniqa was the scab Eshmunen wanted to pick at, Uta was happy to indulge him. "Why Indas?"

The dying sun cast deep shadows inside the tower, stretching Eshmunen's shade until it grew long and thin. A subtle breeze could dissolve it into fragments.

Uta raised a hand to shield her eyes from the light.

Eshmunen glanced out the window, as though he could see Indas stretched before him. "It's a place to which I long to go, but where I will never go. If Moniqa doesn't haunt my rooms, Indas is where she lives. You know, I wish she did haunt me. I wish she hounded me like the bau that hounds my son. At least then I'd know she was close. At least I'd know she felt something for me, even hatred."